GIRLS’ COACH : Mt. Carmel’s Brose Finds a Perfect Way to Finish

The wind of opportunity that shifted in the direction of Mt. Carmel’s Peggy Brose in December seemingly blew past her girls’ basketball team.

Brose, in her 12th year as coach at Mt. Carmel, had requested a transfer to Rancho Bernardo High School, which will open next fall. Meanwhile, her basketball team was in a winter funk, not playing to potential and picked to finish third in the Palomar League.

“It was an opportunity to start a program from scratch,” Brose said, after accepting The Times’ girls’ coach of the year award Sunday morning at the Anaheim Hilton. “We’ve consistently been in the top 10, we’ve won league, we’ve won CIF. Now it’s time to go on and accept new challenges.”

Mt. Carmel rose from its doldrums and finished with a 23-6 record. Three of those losses were to favored Poway, but the Sundevils defeated Poway in the San Diego section Division I semifinal, and went on to win the section championship by defeating Santana, 56-55, in one of the more memorable finals.

Brose, who compiled a 194-103 record at Mt. Carmel, said she never felt her appointment as chairman of the physical education department at Rancho Bernardo was a given. She knew she had a good chance.

“I didn’t know I would be hired there, but I felt my chances were pretty good,” she said. “If someone had come to me in December and scripted my final season, I couldn’t have done it any better.”

Mt. Carmel’s postseason run didn’t end until it lost to state champion Morningside in the semifinals of the Southern California Regionals. But Brose insisted a “let’s win one for the Gipper,” attitude wasn’t present.

“We didn’t feel that way. The subject of me leaving didn’t come up,” Brose said. “It was a classic case of overachievers playing hard and believing in one goal.”

Said junior star forward Vicki de Jesus of Brose: “She was the one who was always telling us we had the potential to do what we wanted to do. Without her, we wouldn’t have gone that far. It’s tough to see her go. I expected her to be there my whole high school career.”